All the Devils' hottest news, from notes to numbers to neutral-zone traps

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Dealing with the morning after his team was eliminated from playoff contention is not something that Lou Lamoriello has had to do often in his 24 seasons as president and general manager of the Devils.

This season is just the third under Lamoriello in which the Devils missed the playoffs. The only other times were in 1988-89 and in 1995-96. The Devils were eliminated on the final day off the 1995-96 season, so Lamoriello has to go back to the final days of just his second season on the job to remember what it’s like to have games left to play, but no chance to make the playoffs.

“Well, this is a new experience at this point for a while. There’s no question,” Lamoriello said from his office this morning. “It’s not something you feel good about, but, as I’ve always said, you have a single purpose and that is to focus on what you have control over right now and not get distracted by thoughts.”

Not surprisingly, Lamoriello was at his desk this morning working, doing the things that need to be done before the Devils’ next game on Tuesday and Pittsburgh and other pressing business such as signing draft picks.

The Devils still have four games left, so Lamoriello wasn’t ready to do a full-season evaluation, yet.

“I’m just thinking about everything that has to do be done,” he said. “I’m sure that over a period of time (he’ll do a full-season evaluation). The season is not over yet here. There’s nothing that can be done. There’s certainly no excuses. We put ourselves in a position that was very difficult to overcome.

“I’m proud of certainly the way the coaching staff and players tried to recover, without question. But there’s nothing here. As I’ve said earlier, I take responsibility for the things the way they were going and right now just have to do what has to be done to get prepared.”

Get prepared not for the playoffs, but the future.

“Right, the things that go on is signing prospects,” he said. “We still have the rest of the season to play. In my mind, we have to play and should play as if we were going into the playoffs. So, that’s why I really don’t want to get into any thought process or discussion on anything because as much as it’s a cliché, I just believe that. I’ve always had a single-minded purpose and that’s the way I’m going to keep it.”

Despite all the positives of the second half, starting with the 23-3-2 surge that nearly got the Devils back into playoff contention, everyone in the organization knows that the way the team played in the first half is the reason it won’t be competing when the playoffs begin next week.

“There’s no question,” Lamoriello said. “The season is a marathon. I’ve always said that. This is also an indication of how important points are early in the season and you can see the difference that in the games now when you maybe you think you could recover. Something is always to be learned from it. You never not learn, but right now the focus is getting prepared for these games this week.”

Lamoriello still isn’t really interested in looking back at the decision to wait as long as he did to fire head coach John MacLean. He gave MacLean 31 games – the Devils went 9-22-2 – before replacing him with Jacques Lemaire on Dec. 23.

“Hindsight is always worth a lot more, but you make decisions on what you feel, what you have at hand and if you don’t feel you would have made those decisions at that same time, knowing what you did then, then you’d better start questioning yourself,” Lamoriello said.

I asked Lamoriello if firing MacLean earlier would have made him feel that he didn’t give him a fair shot to do the job and turn the season around.

“The decision falls on me,” he said. “Everything was done in the best way it could possibly be done and for all the right reasons. I haven’t even thought about that or do I even want to or discuss it.”

Of course, the big question now is whether Lemaire will come back next season. Lemaire has said he won’t make his decision until after the season and Lamoriello is thinking the same way.

“The season is not over.” Lamoriello said.

***Lamoriello said he had no problem with head coach Jacques Lemaire deciding not to pull Martin Broduer in the final two minutes of Saturday’s 3-1 loss to the Canadiens.

***Lamoriello confirmed the obvious in saying that defenseman Matt Corrente will not play again this season. Corrente has been sidelined since Jan. 14 with a right shoulder injury. He’s been skating for more than a months, but it took longer than expected for him to rebuild the strength in his shoulder enough for him to be cleared to play.

Lamoriello said Corrente now has sufficient strength in the shoulder, but with only four games left, he will not play.

“It’s just the strength had not come back and right now it’s there, but he will not play,” Lamoriello said. “We won’t take a chance. We sent him for second opinions to make sure everybody said the same thing. He will be out for the rest of the year.”

Lamoriello said if the Devils had extended their season into the playoffs, Corrente could have come back.

Defenseman Matt Taormina, who fractured his left ankle in a Nov. 14 practice and hasn’t played since, has been cleared to skate, but now will wait a little longer just to be safe. Obviously, there’s no need for him to start skating now, but he will shortly.

“He’s working out and he’s been given the green light to skate and so forth, but he will not be doing anything,” Lamoriello said. “We’re just going to do other things to make sure. There’s no reason to go on the ice and it’s an ankle injury. That’s a little different.

***Lamoriello said defenseman Anton Volchenkov aggravated Friday the same lower-body injury he initially sustained on March 25 in Pittsburgh.

He was unsure if defenseman Colin White will be ready to return from his right leg injury on Tuesday.

About

TOM GULITTI has covered the New Jersey Devils for The Record since 2002. Prior to that, he covered the New York Rangers for four years. Gulitti joined The Record in 1998 after six years at The North Jersey Herald News. He graduated from Binghamton University in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric-Literature.